My Favorite Fitness Apps

When I first got my iPhone however many years ago now, I was very much in "download all the apps!!!" mode.

More specifically, I was in download all the health and fitness-related apps mode.

Also, the iPhone brought the dawn of the fitness selfie

Over the years I've found some of the apps have come and gone, but a few have endured stuck around for the long haul.

Here's a peek at what I use on a regular basis.

1. Sleep Cycle. I did a review of the Sleep Cycle app a while back now, but the gist is the alarm on this app wakes you up during a 30-minute when you're in your lightest sleep. It judges that based on your movement in bed through a sensor in your phone. Plus it gives you a million awesome charts. (Data porn!)

2. Fitsnap. This is a photo overlay app specifically geared toward athletes. It lets you select a workout type (I usually select running) and then it puts your time, distance and various other notes right on top of the picture before you Instagram it, post it to Twitter, etc. I've only had this app for a few months, but it's fun.

3. My Fitness Pal. I actually have a really love/hate relationship with this app. In general, I despise tracking the food I eat. I find it extremely annoying and tedious, and it makes me get way, way too worried about what I'm eating. I prefer to you know, just eat and not think about it. But, I think tracking has its place every once in a while. It was especially helpful when I was having some dairy sensitives in 2012. (Thank goodness that seemed to resolve itself.)

4. RuntasticPro. This is the newest addition to my fitness apps collection. For a long time I never had any interest in an app that tracks time and distance on a run. I mean that's what my Garmin is for, and I always found Garmin's data way more accurate than my phone. But Runtastic released the newest version of its app yesterday with a sleek new design and bunch of new features that I was curious to check out. (And for full disclosure, I was given a sneak peek before it went live.)

I like that it's got a library stocked with routes for when I'm not feeling very motivated to run my same loop for the millionth time. And it's got some voice encouragement built in (though if that's not your thing you can opt to turn it off.) And also, more charts and data.

That's actually probably my favorite part about all of the apps is that they give you quantifiable metrics about yourself. Pardon me while I veer into some major nerdiness over here, but ever since I started running seriously, I have loved getting data and feedback about myself...speed, pace, time, calories burned, hours slept, etc. etc.

I don't have a FitBit, Nike FuelBand or anything like that, which sort of surprises me since I'm obsessed with having all the latest data about myself. For now, I use my suite of fitness apps to satisfy my need for fitness data.

What's your favorite health and fitness app? And why? What should I download immediately?

I totally relate to what you're saying, I used to have the same problem until I tried out ActivityTracker. It's the one fitness app that doesn't drain your battery. It's free if you want to give it a try: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id993667592

About me

My name's Jess and I'm the writer/runner here at Jess Runs. This blog covers all aspects of running, health and fitness, including training, nutrition, motivation and making running fun. You can contact me at jess@jessruns.com.